I decided to write my first blog post about my personal view and approach to programming with the use of AI, because after reading posts from others, various articles, and having conversations with colleagues at work and in the industry, I got the impression that my perspective on this powerful tool is a bit different. I do agree that AI has been something of a breakthrough – it started speeding up a lot of tasks and brought us convenience like never before. But did programming actually become easier because of that?

I asked myself this question one evening after watching an episode of the anime “Dungeon Meshi.” In that episode, an elf suggested lighting a fire with magic instead of using a flint, as the dwarf usually did. He replied that making things easier might lead to losing skills, and added, “convenience and ease are not the same thing”.

I have to admit, that line really hit me and stuck with me, because I have the same issue with AI that he had with magic – I truly don’t want to lose or weaken my valuable programming skills. But to be clear, this doesn’t mean I see AI as something bad or that we shouldn’t use it – I just believe we shouldn’t become dependent on it. I think we should strive to be the kind of programmers who, even when cut off from the internet, are still capable of writing good-quality, working software.

Personally, I don’t use tools built into editors. I interact with AI only through browser-based chats, and in a few specific ways listed below:

• Often to get an initial understanding of difficult or complex concepts – I also ask for sources I can dive into later, in case surface-level knowledge isn’t enough.
• Sometimes to compare some of my solutions (especially ones I’m not fully confident in) with those suggested by the chat, to see if maybe there’s a more optimal approach or something I hadn’t even considered.
• Less frequently, but similarly to the point above – after I’ve planned what and how I want to refactor more complex parts of a project, I ask the chat for suggestions to see if I missed anything or if there’s a better way to do it.
• Really rarely, but it happens – I ask the chat to explain or translate a piece of code that I’ve been struggling to understand for a while.

What I try to avoid – except in truly exceptional situations – is copying AI-generated code and pasting it directly into my project. Besides my earlier point about skill degradation, I’ve got another reason. When I write code myself, I feel like I’m connected to it – I know every piece of it, every symbol I’ve written, and I can navigate through it with ease. Making changes or adding something new feels simple and even enjoyable. What’s more, sometimes at work when I get a bug report or task, I have this strange sense of where exactly in the files I need to look, like a mental map. But it’s a different story when I’ve pasted code (even when I understood it at the time). After a while, that code becomes a black box. I don’t feel that same connection. It’s harder to modify, and when I return to it after some time, I often need to re-learn how it works – much more than with something I wrote myself from scratch.

How often I use AI also depends on who I’m writing code for. If it’s for work, for a company, I use it much more. After all, no one’s paying me for my personal satisfaction from implementing a feature or fixing a bug. On top of that, I feel the pressure – that I won’t be good enough or fast enough compared to my colleagues who are more eager to use every advantage available. On the other hand, I still believe I’m doing the right thing by limiting myself to those four use cases, and I have a strong sense that in the long run, it will pay off with better results. But even if I turn out to be wrong someday and I get replaced – I won’t regret my choices, because I simply don’t want to work in a way that makes me feel suffocated.

To wrap it up, I’d like to back to the question I asked at the beginning – did programming become easier? Maybe it’s just skill issue and I’m the only one struggling with this. But in my opinion, no – programming has not become easier. Programming with AI is more convenient, but if we rely on this convenience, we can become addicted to it ending up with tunnel vision and losing some core skills.